Straight: A character changes drastically, and another asks if it's something mundane like a wardrobe change.
- Straight: Alice turns into a werewolf, but when Bob sees her, he says, "You look different. Did you get a new haircut?"
- Exaggerated: Alice turns into a bald Eldritch Abomination, but Bob asks, "new haircut?"
- Downplayed: Alice gets a new dress, but Bob doesn't pick up on it and asks if it's a new haircut.
- Justified:
- Bob is stupid.
- Whatever supernatural forces that turned Alice into a werewolf also affected Bob's perception.
- Alice attacked Bob, leaving him with a head injury.
- Blind Bob felt Alice's fur and came to the wrong but understandable conclusion that it was hair.
- Bob was just trying to be polite.
- Inverted: Alice gets a new haircut, but when she asks Bob if he notices anything new about her, he says, "Are you a werewolf now?!".
- Subverted: Bob is known for asking if drastic changes are mundane, but now he says, "You look different. Did you get to be a werewolf?"
- Double Subverted: Where "werewolf" is his personal slang for people with a certain haircut.
- Parodied: Alice loses all her hair from a cruel accident, but Bob asks her if she got a haircut.
- Zigzagged: Bob makes several false guesses about Alice's condition, from the mundane ("Did you get a new haircut?") to the extreme ("Are you a zombie?").
- Averted:
- Alice does not change.
- Bob immediately notices that Alice is a werewolf.
- Lampshaded: "How did you not notice I was a friggin' werewolf?!"
- Enforced: "This is a comedy/horror, so we need to put a joke in after Alice's werewolf transformation lest it become too scary to be funny anymore."
- Invoked: Alice wants to hear Bob's inappropriate question, so she lets him see what happened to her.
- Exploited: Alice eats Bob while he's busy guessing what's different.
- Defied: Bob is worried about making a wrong question, which he admits while showing that he knows that Alice turned into a werewolf.
- Discussed: "I had a strange dream where I'd turned into a werewolf, but everyone didn't notice! They thought I'd just changed my hair or something. I hope that doesn't happen in real life."
- Conversed: "What's going on with that 'Bob' character?! His coworker's a werewolf now and he doesn't even know what's different?!"
- Implied: Alice, after having eaten Bob, remarks that he's bad at noticing changes.
- Deconstructed: Bob and Alice were friends, and this damages their relationship, leading to her either eating him or ending their friendship, as Bob is left to grieve over the retribution.
- Reconstructed: Alice spares Bob because she finds his question funny.
- Played for Laughs: Alice did get a new haircut, but then points out that that's not the important part.
- Played for Drama: Bob lied about not being blind all of his life, and when people see him meet Alice, his lie is exposed.
- Played for Horror: Bob is usually the most attentive of the group, so when he doesn't realise what's changed about Alice, that means something is seriously wrong with him too.
Back to Did You Get a New Haircut?.
